Gender Stereotyping - Women still clean on TV





In our current society, housework is common to be done by both  men and women, however it is still common to see women predominantly appearing in cleaning advertisements as the main " cleaner" of the ad. Due to historical gender stereotypes, women tend to be portrayed as the dominant gender that cleans the house and after her family. For example, in the second advertisement by Swiffer, the spokesmodel is dressed as a cultural icon called Rosie the riveter which represented women working in factories and shipyards in WWII. 

In all of the ads, it appears as the spokesmodels are portrayed decoratively and in each advertisement, interpretation of these ads develops typical gender stereotypes. In the first two pictures, women are shown as the spokesmodel which tends to be typical in the cleaning products industry. It insinuates that women should be responsible for cleaning based off historical gender stereotypes of women usually obligated to do household chores. In the third picture however with oxiclean, it shows a man holding the product and pointing to it which in my opinion deviates from the typical stereotypical advertisements of using women in cleaning ads.

I think that the ads which I have selected demonstrates how the cleaning industry continues to use stereotypical domestic behaviours as a driving force to  advertise and to sell their products.It does have the capability to appeal to more people since it is something which is unfortunately accepted in history and only starting to fade away. I believe that it already has but the continuous exposure of women depicted in cleaning ads could cause ramifications such as women trying to meet this expectations set upon them. Simultaneously it also depicts men as being more carefree and lazy about housework and simply allowing females to carry out these tasks. There are a lot of investigations which prove that women do more housework and I do agree with it but on the other hand I also think that times are changing and thus I believe that social norms such as these  are slowly diminishing and it needs to continue.

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